The past few years has witnessed the ever-increasing availability of relatively cheap, low power wireless data communication services, networks and devices, promising near wire speed transmission and reliability. One technology in particular, described in the IEEE Standard 802.11a (1999) and IEEE Draft Standard 802.11g (2002) Supplements to the ANS/IEEE Standard 802.11, 1999 edition, collectively incorporated herein fully by reference and collectively referenced as “IEEE 802.11a & 802.11g”, has recently been commercialized with the promise of 54 Mbps+ peak data rates, making it a strong competitor to traditional wired Ethernet and the more ubiquitous “802.11b” or “WiFi” 11 Mbps wireless transmission standard.
IEEE 802.11a & 802.11g compliant transmission systems achieve their high data transmission rates using a type of multicarrier frequency domain symbol encoding or modulation known as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, (“OFDM”). In particular, OFDM encoded symbols mapped up to 64 QAM multicarrier constellation bear the data intended for transmission, though even larger constellations are contemplated to further increase data throughput. Before final power amplification and transmission, these OFDM encoded symbols are converted into the time domain using Inverse Fast Fourier Transform techniques resulting in a relatively high-speed time domain signal with a large peak-to-average ratio (PAR).
One concern with the IEEE 802.11a & 802.11g standards is the rather strict power levels compliant transmission equipment must operate within without running afoul of FCC and international intraband and interband interference limits, particularly at lower channels within the 5 GHz band for North American operation. Accordingly, standards compliant transmission equipment designers continue to seek ways to improve reception performance without needing to increase power output of the transmitter. One cost effective technique that has surprisingly not been explored in IEEE 802.11a/802.11g, is the concept of transmit diversity used in single carrier systems. See e.g., S. M. Alamouti, “A Simple Transmit Diversity Technique For Wireless Communications,” IEEE Journal on Select Areas in Communications, vol. 16, no. 8, October 1998, pp. 1451-1458 which is incorporated herein fully by reference. Transmit diversity provides a diversity gain without multiple receiver chains as well as reduced power output from each transmitter since, for a constant total radiated power, the transmitted signals of interest are broadcast over two separately positioned antennas using two different RF transmission pathways at ½ power. This 3-dB reduction for each transmitting amplifier permits use of less expensive and less linear power amplifiers yet retain if not improve overall reception performance. However, in order to properly account for multipath distortion and other artifacts introduced by having dual proximate RF transmitters operating at the same carrier frequency, the receiver must know in advance that it will be operating in a diversity environment and accommodate for these effects.
The present high speed data wireless transmission standards in the 802.11 family, including the commercially important IEEE 802.11a & 802.11g standards do not account for transmit diversity. Therefore, it would be advantageous to incorporate transmit diversity in a wireless transmission system that is backwards compatible with the IEEE 802.11a & 802.11g standards, as well as provide for a wireless diversity system capable of operating in multicarrier encoding environments generally.